Dubai: When international media revealed the iPhone's ability to track and store users' movements, it sent users into a panic across the world. But the initial discovery of this potentially invasive feature was made at Zayed University (ZU).

The original discovery was made at the Advanced Cyber Forensics Research Laboratory at ZU in Abu Dhabi in June 2010, researchers at the university say. This was approximately a year before it was revealed to the media.

The tracking feature was found as part of a master's research dissertation on cyber security done by then ZU student, Mona Badr, with Dr Ebrahim Baggili, director of the cyber forensics lab at ZU as her research supervisor.

"When I first heard the news I immediately thought I should have gone to the media with it because we'd known about it for so long," said Dr Baggili. "It wasn't information we really prioritised in the research because I had plans to use it for something else.